Method of Mancy

There is a man standing in a tree. A tall but skinny tree that seems far too small to support his weight. He must be trimming the branches, but it looks more like he’s having a playground fight with them–a poking contest. His carefully perched form in the tree leans out like a banana while he goes after it with the enormous trimmers.

I watch him from across the field, in the lobby of the building, peering out the enormous glass windows. I sit on the strangely shaped cushion, too big and too nebulous to really be called a chair, and stare outside, thinking nothing. The man continues to attack the tree. I continue to wonder how he hasn’t fallen out of it.

Someone answers a phone call across the building and their voice bounces around the lobby, echoing half-formed syllables off the glass. I sink farther into the vague cushioned shape, feeling a bit heavier than usual. I close my eyes for a few seconds, trying to ease the headache that had been building behind them for the past hour.

When I open them again, the tree is just a tree and the man is gone. My fifteen minutes are up, and I shamble back toward my desk, wondering if the tree is really better off now that so much of it has been cut out.